Kirk Boyd's office in San Francisco's Presidio has a hodgepodge of paintings (including one of founding father James Madison), sculptures (Rodin's "The Thinker" is prominent), globes and books that inspire him to continue working.

For five years, Boyd has devoted his life to researching and crafting a document he says will revolutionize the way the world treats its citizens.

His may seem like a Sisyphean task, but Boyd -- a human rights lawyer who lives in Mill Valley -- believes the time is right for an International Bill of Rights that guarantees free speech, freedom of religion, access to free or low-cost health care, shelter, education, fair trials and a host of other "absolute" priorities.

Boyd, 44, founded the project that now is affiliated with the University of California and has a 21-person advisory board. He has convinced a group of academics and professionals that his idea is solid, but Boyd knows he'll meet others who say it's foolish to invest time and energy in it, especially when there's not even international consensus on Iraq, Israel and the Palestinians, or other big issues that have consumed world attention.

"You have to think expansively," Boyd said in an interview before flying to Geneva. "Robert Kennedy said the first thing that I ever put to heart in my life. He said, 'Some men see things as they are and wonder why. I dream things that never were and say, why not?' This project is my life. I'm trying to live by that."

Under Boyd's plan, the European Court of Human Rights, which is based in Strasbourg, France, would become the International Court of Human Rights. The new court would have 35 judges, who would be approved by the United Nations. People would bring their cases first to the courts of their own country, then - - when those legal proceedings were exhausted -- to the International Court of Human Rights.

Theoretically, the cases could concern everything from unfair jailings to sewage problems. Among its tenets, the International Bill of Rights seeks to ensure everyone's right to "shelter with safe water," "sufficient food necessary for good health" and free or low-cost "vision, dental and mental care."

The document would also guarantee a person's right to practice "his or her cultural identity," and people's right to be protected from "unreasonable searches and seizures of their person, home and belongings." It also demands an end to nuclear weapons and testing, and the end of "slavery or indentured servitude."

The document (available online at www.ibor.org) states that "Failure to comply with the decisions of the court may result in expulsion from the United Nations."

Boyd, who has three law degrees (including a doctorate) from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, says it's a practical consideration to link the International Bill of Rights to U.N. membership. He also wants to link the International Bill of Rights to economic treaties negotiated by the World Trade Organization, just as membership in the European Union commits countries to certain human rights norms.

In essence, Boyd has reworked and strengthened -- radically in some ways -- ideas that have previously been addressed in such documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the U.N. General Assembly adopted in 1948.

The biggest difference is that Boyd's plan would have an enforcement mechanism, centered around the Strasbourg court. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which calls for an end to slavery, arbitrary arrests and other injustices, is little more than a set of ideals that, practically speaking, are not enforced, according to critics.

"He's a visionary," said David Caron, professor of international law at Boalt Hall and a board member of the project. "He's trying to think about the next step in human rights. Some human rights people want to finish the current step, but if human rights are going to be enforceable, it has to reach the international courts."

When he returns to the Bay Area, Boyd will begin the task of raising attention about the project in the United States. He also knows he needs to convince Americans of it at a time when the United States has ignored the United Nations' wishes on Iraq and rejected the legal standing of the International Criminal Court.

"I think it's only a matter of time before U.S. policies change and we see that it's in our own interests to have a collective approach," he says. "One of the great things about our project is that it rests on the history of U.S. participation in the United Nations. Eleanor Roosevelt ushered in the United Nations and its charter. This is our proud heritage, though it's one that has been neglected."

Boyd said there wasn't a defining moment that propelled him into this project. Instead, it's been a series of events and realizations, including seeing too much social inequality around the world.

Boyd, who grew up in Palo Alto, hints at the personal price he has paid because of all the time he has spent in his Presidio office and on work at home. He's a single father of two boys, 10 and 7. While he makes sure he's there to take his sons to Little League games and to and from school ("My work doesn't stop my microworld; the two are linked"), he left them at home for this trip to Geneva.

Boyd says he isn't nervous about appearing before the commission. At the end of an interview, he finds time to joke about a task he had to do before flying to Europe: mowing his lawn.

"It's not easy," he says, "to change the world and still have a lawn."

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